What humans could learn from bananas

I’m back at a screen, where I learn how to bring back wooly mammoths, how to bring down a drone, and what humans could learn from bananas.

I can also learn the truth about “normal sex,” pesticides, BPA, bug spray and frozen yogurt, which might be -- don’t mix them, perhaps. If I click again, I can get answers to questions like:

*Who's charming, disarming, yet heavily armed and equipping a brutal military coup?

*How to get a free burger at Five Guys.

*What to do if your boss is an app.

I used to write stuff like that. I could make a fascinating index of forgotten things if I could remember them. That’s history now.

History includes critical masses no one wants to talk about and critical messes no one wants to hear about. These tend to be forgotten fast.

For example, in the 1990s, when I was very steadily employed, we had Columbine, a siege in Waco, a civil war in Somalia, genocide in Rwanda, a civil war in Sierra Leone, and Monica Lewinsky. We remember Monica.

Starlets with 15 minutes of fame are way more covered than famine, or even less covered, depending on what they’re not wearing that day. A few decades back, marijuana was illegal and you could smoke cigarettes wherever you wanted.

But things evolved and now — with one click — you can pray like a monk in under two minutes and write a memoir in under five. So I did. It went like this:

“Once I was hit by a truck. When someone asked how I felt, I said I felt like I was hit by a truck.

Things hurtled through my head,

Thoughts fought to get said,

Lurched at any available language,

Caught any available shred,

Stitched with any available thread.

Then I got better and started this stack.

A few decades back there was an explosion in restaurants stressing freshness, artisanal methods, farm-to-table goodness and ethically sourced ingredients. Also ingredients placed on plates by human hands. Imagine that. The perfect appendage for placing food on plates.

But nutritionally not much had changed. The food hadn’t gotten healthier, but the marketing had. I am alone in an unfunny, unsafe arguably unfair place and sometimes I write like it's a comedy, even when it’s partly funny and partly not.